Rampart Revelations Upset City Residents, Undercut Confidence

The Rampart police corruption scandal is contributing to a malaise in Los Angeles, helping to raise questions about the city’s health and image, devastating public impressions of the Los Angeles Police Department and fueling strong sentiment for the appointment of an independent commission to investigate the crisis.

And yet, despite many residents’ unhappiness with the scandal and its ramifications, Mayor Richard Riordan continues to enjoy strong public support. By contrast, many residents registered mixed feelings about the job performance of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

Those findings, culled from a new Times poll, suggest that the scandal has had a deep effect on Los Angeles’ sense of itself, sowing doubts despite a strong economy and continuing reductions in crime.

Three out of four Los Angeles residents described themselves as “very upset” or “somewhat upset” by the stream of revelations emerging from the LAPD in recent months, including charges that officers shot, beat and framed suspects and committed other crimes.

Moreover, a majority of city residents rejects the contention--advanced by Parks, Riordan and others--that the misdeeds are the work of a few bad officers. Fifty-one percent of city residents disagree with that notion; instead, they believe the problems are “symptomatic of a larger problem within the Police Department.” Another 39% believe they are “isolated incidents and are not representative of the Los Angeles Police Department as a whole.”

According to the poll, 75% of those surveyed think an independent commission should be convened to investigate the scandal. Just 12% say the city’s civilian Police Commission, whose members are appointed by Riordan and which sets policy for the LAPD, should handle that inquiry.

One respondent who agreed to a follow-up interview, David Hanna, put into words the frustration felt by many residents confronted with one disturbing revelation after another emanating from the LAPD.

“If you can’t trust the police and depend on them, you’re in trouble,” he said. “I just don’t know how this could happen.”

The Times poll interviewed 1,219 city residents from March 29 through Wednesday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Nowhere are the results of the poll more striking than in the public’s impression of the LAPD itself. Residents like and respect the individual officers in their communities, and 55% of respondents say they believe most police are honest and hard-working. But just 36% have a favorable impression of the way the LAPD as a whole does its job. That split in some ways resembles public sentiments about Congress, where people often express appreciation for their own representative but distaste for the institution collectively.

In the case of the LAPD, however, Los Angeles residents have turned against their Police Department with a force and breadth not seen since the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Rodney King beating.

At its nadir, the LAPD’s job-approval rating plummeted to 34% in March 1991, the month that officers were caught on videotape beating King into submission in Lake View Terrace. At that point, 59% of Los Angeles residents registered disapproval of their Police Department. Respondents to that survey also registered extreme dismay at the videotape: 76% said they were very upset by what they saw, a far more visceral reaction than responses so far to the more slowly unfolding Rampart allegations.

In the years since the King beating, the department’s public image generally has improved, though it took another hit after the LAPD’s confused--and, in some minds, cowardly--response to the 1992 riots, which broke out after the officers were acquitted in the King beating. The department then steadily began to win back the public’s faith to the point that nearly two-thirds of city residents said in a survey last year that they approved of the department’s performance. Just 13 months later, that number has dropped by nearly half.

What’s more, the public’s misgivings extend beyond the LAPD.

In sharp contrast to just one year ago, city residents who say that Los Angeles is on the wrong track now outnumber those who believe it’s going in the right direction. A year ago, 53% of those interviewed said they thought Los Angeles was headed in the right direction, while 29% said it was not. The latest survey finds just 35% approve of the current direction, contrasted with 45% who say it’s headed the wrong way.

Exactly how much the police scandal is influencing those perceptions is hard to say. Residents listed crime and education as major causes of concern, and the continuing controversy over the Los Angeles Unified School District’s mired effort to build the Belmont Learning Complex downtown weighs heavily on many residents’ minds.

But, when asked, nearly eight in 10 respondents said Rampart was contributing to the city’s mood--and most of those said its impact was negative. Sixty-eight percent said the scandal was damaging the city’s mood; 10% said it was having a positive effect and 16% that it was having no effect. The remaining 6% said they did not know enough to venture an opinion.

“All of Los Angeles County is going to suffer because the police didn’t do their job,” said Darlene Zaun, a respondent who has lived in Los Angeles for 50 years. “We just started to get our roads fixed out here in the Valley. Now we’re going to have to wait again.” She was referring to the cost of settling litigation linked to the scandal.

Amid the poll numbers on Rampart are telling signs of the way different residents perceive the continuing disclosures of police corruption. In general, the results suggest that African Americans and Latinos are far less surprised than whites by the allegations of police misconduct, and are far more inclined to see racism and brutality as common facts of LAPD life.

According to the poll, 81% of blacks and 73% of Latinos believe it is common for LAPD officers to express racist sentiments. Among whites, 58% said they thought such feelings were common among Los Angeles police.

Similarly, 83% of blacks and 72% of Latinos believe officers commonly commit acts of brutality. That view was shared by 43% of white respondents.

Races See Things Differently

In response to the question of whether the Rampart allegations are symptomatic of a larger LAPD problem or are isolated instances, 55% of whites saw them as isolated, contrasted with 42% who believed they were emblematic of the LAPD generally.

By contrast, 79% of blacks saw the particular allegations as part of a larger problem, and just 14% believed they were aberrations. Latinos split the difference, with 52% seeing the problems as endemic and 24% viewing them as specific to the particular officers.

Those divergent senses of the Police Department are reflected in economic and educational terms as well. Richer, better-educated respondents generally see the LAPD as a more benign institution. Poorer, less educated residents view the department with far more skepticism.

That divergence is particularly apparent in the judgment of who is to blame for the corruption within the LAPD.

White respondents hold the now-departed captain of the Rampart Division largely responsible for the problems in that division, with 24% pointing the finger at him. Twenty-eight percent of whites say the fault lies with the individual officers accused in the scandal.

Latinos, whose neighborhoods have felt the brunt of the misconduct, are similarly inclined to hold those individuals responsible. Fully 42% of those who identified themselves as Latinos in the poll blamed individual officers.

Blacks, by contrast, overwhelmingly pointed to the LAPD’s culture and climate as the underlying cause of the scandal. Thirty-four percent of African Americans who responded to the survey blamed that culture, far and away the dominant cause those respondents cited.

That no doubt reflects the deep and uneasy relationship between many African Americans and the LAPD. For years, African Americans were discriminated against within the department, and many complained of mistreatment by its officers. When the King video came to light in 1991, many African Americans saw it as vindication of their long-standing grievances, which they felt had been ignored or minimized by the city’s largely white political leadership.

One sign of African Americans’ continued antipathy toward the LAPD: Although their opinions about the department’s racism and brutality suggest that they are far more skeptical than others about it, they also expressed far less surprise at the Rampart revelations. Sixty-one percent of whites and 53% of Latinos described themselves as “very upset” by the scandal; just 26% of blacks described themselves that way.

Despite the widespread discomfort reflected throughout the survey, Mayor Riordan continues to command strong personal approval. Fifty-seven percent of those polled have a favorable impression of his job performance--nearly the highest poll numbers he has ever received--and that warm feeling extends to many of those who disagree with his policies.

More than half of those polled say the next mayor should change Riordan’s policies, and three out of four reject his contention that the Police Commission, not an independent panel, should investigate the scandal. Still, they overwhelmingly like Riordan.

“He’s trying his best for the city,” said a respondent named David, who asked that only his first name be used. “He works to make things better, and we don’t have to pay him.”

Riordan’s Popularity Remains Strong

Riordan, a multimillionaire lawyer and venture capitalist, accepts just $1 a year in salary for serving as mayor.

Even some who criticize Riordan’s handling of one issue or another seem to like him. In follow-up interviews, several respondents volunteered that they felt safer in their communities than they did when Riordan was elected in 1993.

“He’s doing something right,” said one of those residents, Walter Floyd.

But Floyd also took issue with Riordan’s handling of the Rampart scandal--both in the way he has reacted to the revelations and in the decisions that allowed corruption to take root and flourish in Rampart and perhaps other police divisions.

“He’s the boss,” Floyd said of the mayor. “He appoints everybody else. If he can’t appoint the people to do the job right, what good is he?”

One of those Riordan appointed--in fact, arguably the most important appointment of his entire seven years in office--is Parks. Named to head the LAPD in 1997, Parks has served just over half of his five-year term.

Within the city’s political leadership, opinion about Parks is profoundly split. Virtually no one disputes his command of the LAPD and encyclopedic knowledge of it. But some find him aloof or arrogant, resistant to criticism and advice.

Those conflicting sentiments seem to be playing out with the public as well.

Parks has never commanded the affection that the public had for his predecessor, Willie L. Williams, who struggled to take charge of the department but whose charming public persona made him enormously popular. In his five years in office, Williams typically won job approval ratings of 60% or higher, very strong for anyone in public life.

A year ago, 47% of city residents said they approved of Parks’ performance, with just 10% disapproving. In that poll, 43% either did not know enough about him to form an opinion or were undecided. Since then, Parks’ department has been embroiled in the worst corruption scandal in its history, and many of those who once were undecided have started to make up their minds.

The good news for Parks is that his approval rating has nudged up during that period, to the point where 50% of those surveyed now say they have a positive impression of his work. The bad news, however, is that his disapproval rating is increasing far faster.

Compared to one year ago, nearly three times as many Los Angeles residents, 29%, disapprove of Parks’ handling of his job.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Rampart Scandal

City residents are upset about allegations of misconduct in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division and think they are symptomatic of a larger problem.

*

* Chief Bernard C. Parks’ job approval rating:

*

* What is your impression of your local police officers?

*--*

NOW MARCH 1999 Favorable 71% Unfavorable 23% Don’t know 6%

*--*

*

* How many Los Angeles police officers are honest and hard-working?

*--*

All Whites Blacks Latinos Most 55% 69% 38% 45% Just some 37% 27% 46% 45% Not too many 4% 2% 9% 4% Most are not 3% 1% 4% 5% Don’t know 1% 1% 3% 1%

*--*

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* Are you upset about the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart Division?

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Central South All Westside Valley L.A. L.A. Very upset 49% 43% 60% 59% 31% Somewhat upset 25% 25% 31% 16% 36% Not too upset 18% 9% 3% 24% 8% Not at all upset 6% 20% 3% 1% 23% Don’t know 2% 3% 3% - 2%

*--*

*

* Do you think the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart Division is symptomatic of a larger problem in the Police Department, or do you think these are isolated incidents that are not representative of the LAPD as a whole?

*--*

All Whites Blacks Latinos Symptom of larger problem 51% 42% 79% 52% Isolated incidents 39% 55% 14% 24% Don’t know 10% 3% 7% 24%

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* Who should investigate the allegations of police misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart Division?

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All Whites Blacks Latinos The Police Commission 12% 16% 8% 11% An independent commission 75% 75% 88% 74% Both (volunteered) 9% 3% 1% 14% Don’t know 4% 6% 3% 1%

*--*

*

Notes: All questions were asked of residents of the city of Los Angeles.

-- indicates less than 0.5%.

Source: Los Angeles Times polls

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 1,219 residents of the city of Los Angeles by telephone March 29-April 5. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the city of Los Angeles. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Asians were interviewed as part of the sample, but there were not enough in the city sample to show as a separate subgroup.

*

Times Poll results are also available at https://www.latimes.com/timespoll

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rating the LAPD

* Job Approval

Note: Poll taken among city residents; no data available for 1989, 1990 or 1998

* Do you think the alleged misconduct by LAPD officers of the Rampart Division is symptomatic of a larger problem in the Police Department, or do you think these are isolated incidents that are not representative of the LAPD as a whole?

*--*

Symptom of larger Isolated Don’t problem incidents know All 51% 39% 10% Whites 42% 55% 3% Blacks 79% 14% 7% Latinos 52% 24% 24%

*--*

Source: Los Angeles Times polls